At A Glance
Omnichannel marketing only works when a consumer’s journey across TV, social, and in-store moments builds one connected story instead of scattered impressions. In this conversation, Experian and MiQ discuss how marketers can use connected identity and richer audience data, including MiQ Sigma, to plan and activate campaigns that reach the right people across channels and markets.Key takeways
- MiQ Sigma uses Experian’s Digital Graph inside MiQ’s Identity Spine to resolve audiences consistently across devices, channels, and data feeds.
- Sigma’s Planning Agent turns a single brief into an omnichannel plan, with Experian Marketing Attributes enriching the demographic and behavioral signals behind its recommendations.
- Experian WorldView delivers a geographic unit smaller and more consistent than a postal code across more than 130 countries, helping marketers hold local relevance at global scale.
- Before the next plan, marketers should check whether it’s connected (not just everywhere), data led, built on portable first-party data, and consistent in signal depth across markets.
One consumer might see an ad on TV Sunday night, scroll past a social post on Monday, and buy in-store by Friday. Each moment happens on a different platform with its own identifiers and data, and together they form one continuous journey. Planning for that journey starts with connecting the signals behind it.
Lara Koenig, Global VP of Strategy and Partnerships at global programmatic media partner MiQ, joined us to discuss how a connected identity foundation and richer consumer attributes help marketers plan omnichannel campaigns with insight instead of assumptions and reach the right people across markets.
What makes a plan omnichannel, not just everywhere
A connected omnichannel plan carries one story across platforms. Each message builds on what a consumer has already seen, so reach adds up to a consistent experience across TV, social, digital, and in-store moments.
Connecting those moments takes work. First-party data varies in depth from brand to brand, platforms use different identifiers, and for global campaigns, the signals that explain behavior in one country often look different in the next.
Planning with data before the dollars move
MiQ uses data and artificial intelligence (AI) to give marketers a fuller view of their audiences, combining age and gender with the attributes and behaviors that shape intent. One consumer might be a parent, a retail shopper, and a sports fan at once, and each signal adds to the plan. That fuller picture helps MiQ plan around the moments when intent is highest.
To make that practical, MiQ built MiQ Sigma, a platform that puts data in marketers’ hands so they can explore it and find the audiences they hadn’t thought to look for.
Where Experian fits inside MiQ Sigma
MiQ integrated Experian’s Digital Graph into its Identity Spine, which connects dozens of data feeds and ID solutions. That gives MiQ cross-device and cross-channel resolution it can apply consistently, whatever the signal.
Sigma’s Planning Agent turns a single brief into an omnichannel plan with audience, channel, and tactical recommendations. Experian Marketing Attributes enrich the demographic and behavioral signals that feed the Planning Agent, adding TV viewing and purchase behavior to data marketers already trust, so its recommendations reflect what audiences watch and buy.
“We’ve built a platform called MiQ Sigma. Experian is a core element of the identity spine behind that which helps us enrich a lot of other data partners we license to tell a really connected universe story across the world.”
MiQLara Koenig, Global VP of Strategy and Partnerships
Identity is the foundation
A marketer’s first-party data is their richest asset, and it varies widely: deep email-based insight for some brands, a name and address for others, and very little for consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands whose sales usually happen at the retailer. Identity resolution makes that data addressable. It works like a translation layer, connecting a marketer’s customer data to the identifiers media platforms accept, such as hashed emails (HEMS), and mobile ad IDs (MAIDS).
Experian keeps the foundation consistent while the inputs vary. Our identity foundation is signal-agnostic and platform-agnostic, so MiQ can plug in local retailer, broadcaster, and device data and still resolve it to the same person and household view. MiQ saw this in practice when it brought Experian’s Digital Graph into its Identity Spine, expanding reach and scale across screens.
Why scale and local relevance pull against each other
Scale and relevance can pull against each other when the data behind a plan change from one market to the next. Retailers, broadcasters, and TV manufacturers differ by country, and in some regions, privacy rules shape how identifiers like IP addresses and hashed emails can be used, which makes location a practical unit for planning. Experian WorldView provides demographic and location data in consistent 250-meter grids, a unit smaller than most postal codes, across global markets. That shared framework helps marketers compare markets and sharpen local planning in categories such as quick-service restaurants, CPG, and retail.
Beyond reach: Making the hard question simple
Reach is the starting point. From there, marketers need to understand audiences in the context of their goals, activate through privacy-forward, governed identity, measure what happened, and keep improving..
“There’s a lot of complex stitching that happens just to answer that basic question: who do you want to target and why, and how do you reach them? There are 30 different platforms, 60 different seats behind that, identity resolution partners, TV viewership partners. We want to make that question really simple to answer.”
MiQLara Koenig, Global VP of Strategy and Partnerships
Four questions to ask before your next omnichannel plan
Before you build your next omnichannel plan, start with four questions:
Together, MiQ and Experian help marketers connect identity, insight, activation, and measurement across channels and markets.
Ready to plan with more connected data? Contact us
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About our expert
Lara Koenig
Global VP of Strategy and Partnerships, MiQ
Lara Koenig is Vice President of Global Strategy & Partnerships at MiQ, where she leads product strategy and partnership development for the company’s omnichannel advertising capabilities. Over her decade-long tenure at MiQ, Lara has led high-scale teams across Programmatic Trading and Product Development, managing departments of more than 50 people and helping deliver innovative advertising solutions and best-in-class service for global marketers.
Lara brings deep expertise across programmatic trading, product development, identity, data collaboration and the broader ad tech ecosystem. In her current role, she works with global and enterprise clients and partners to help turn fragmented consumer signals into more connected, actionable media strategies across channels and markets. Her perspective centers on giving marketers a clearer understanding of audiences, the data behind consumer behavior and the partnerships needed to plan, activate and measure more effectively.
A recognized voice in the industry, Lara also contributes to cross-industry working groups and advocates for publisher development, education and stronger standards around buy-side supply path optimization. She regularly speaks on omnichannel strategy, retail media, AI-enabled planning, identity and the evolution of advertising partnerships.
FAQs
MiQ Sigma is MiQ’s AI-powered platform that gives marketers direct access to audience data, so they can find audiences they hadn’t considered instead of relying on a single demographic persona. Experian’s Digital Graph sits inside MiQ’s Identity Spine, which powers Sigma’s cross-device and cross-channel resolution, and Experian Marketing Attributes enrich the signals behind Sigma’s Planning Agent.
Experian’s identity foundation is signal-agnostic and platform-agnostic, so MiQ can plug in local retailer, broadcaster, and device data and still resolve it to the same person and household view. Experian’s Digital Graph expanded MiQ’s reach and scale across screens, and Experian WorldView adds consistent socio-demographic and location data across more than 130 countries for markets where postcodes aren’t precise or available enough for activation.
A connected plan carries one cohesive story and accounts for what a consumer has already seen, so each message builds on the last. A plan that simply runs across many channels often repeats the same message in different places and calls that reach, without the identity and data work needed to link those channels together.
First-party data varies widely in depth, from deep email-based insight to just a name and address, and on its own it often can’t be used across every platform a marketer buys on. Identity resolution works like a translation layer, connecting that data to the identifiers platforms accept, such as a hashed email, mobile ad ID, or phone number, so marketers can activate consistently across channels.
Global omnichannel plans don’t need identical data in every country, but the data needs to resolve to a consistent, comparable view across markets, since retailers, broadcasters, and privacy rules differ by country. Experian WorldView addresses this by providing a geographic unit smaller and more consistent than a postal code across more than 130 countries, giving marketers a way to keep local targeting accurate without losing global scale.
Latest posts
Advertisers continue to increase their spending across addressable TV, connected TV (CTV), and digital. According to IAB’s “2021 Video Ad Spend and 2022 Outlook” report, digital video ad spending is expected to increase by 26% to $49.2 billion in 2022. Understanding who consumers are and how to best reach them in their preferred channel is becoming more complex. Damian Amitin and Colleen Dawe discuss how a seamless identity strategy can address the complexity of the emerging TV space. The evolution of identity resolution Around ten years ago, the idea of digital “identity resolution” or “Device Graphs” was born. This idea connected cookies and MAIDs to understand when many IDs were the same person or household. In more recent years, our industry began to connect that initial understanding to the CTV ecosystem. But, a large part of the TV ecosystem existed in silos, like first and third-party audience data, and the growing advanced TV market. The goal of identity resolution has always been to understand the consumer better. To achieve more accurate targeting and measurement in the CTV ecosystem, we must incorporate the following: What we know about the household and consumer from an ID perspective Who the consumer is as it relates to audience data, as well as the wealth of first-party data in the advanced TV space We know the cookie is a flawed way to collect data. While Google delayed the deprecation of third-party cookies, there are other challenges that we face right now. Such as the glaring gap in Safari traffic and the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) turning to “opt-in.” Understanding consumer behavior across devices and platforms continues to challenge marketers and publishers. These challenges are creating the need to find more stable identifiers. Though the cookie remains valuable, it has an uncertain future. This has led advertisers to place bigger bets on the combination of addressable and CTV. The overlap in addressable and CTV data leads to fragmentation Personally identifiable information (PII) makes up the majority of addressable TV households’ data. Part of the attraction to CTV is that their IDs remain universal, persistent, and stable. Analysts project that CTV ad spending will hit $23B in 2023. Consumers now have an average of 4.7 streaming subscriptions per household. It’s no surprise then, that Disney+, HBO, and Netflix released or announced ad-supported tiers. Addressable TV and CTV are often thought of as distinct markets across the industry. But, in the context of identity, we should look at them through the same lens. Millions of households still consume TV and video content via a set-top box or through apps on CTVs. This is in addition to what they consume on their laptops, tablets, and phones. Of the top 11 cable and satellite providers, 65 million U.S. households still have a box in their homes. On the other hand, approximately 96 million U.S. households have at least one or more Smart TVs and streaming services. With about 126 million total U.S. TV households, that’s a lot of overlap. There are still significant numbers of both addressable and CTV homes. How can we address fragmented TV consumption? Through a holistic and comprehensive approach to identity. An approach that captures addressable TV, CTV, and digital identifiers. An approach that captures all audience attributes inside of a single identity graph. This is the ideal approach for publishers, AdTech vendors, and brands. Discover how to unlock holistic identity How can we achieve a holistic identity? Through a three-pillared approach: First-party data onboarding Digital identifiers Consumer data First-party data onboarding Bringing offline data from a brand’s consumers is very valuable due to the quality of the data. Because the data is being collected right from the source, you know it’s accurate. It provides the foundation you can build your identity strategy from. Digital identifiers Once you create a foundation with first-party data, you need to connect it. Either with an internal or licensed digital ID graph. Then you can understand the connections between all devices within the household. Consumer data After you know which devices tie to a single consumer, you’ll want to act on that knowledge. The next step is to partner with a data provider that can help you understand your consumers. Establishing this partnership will help improve targeting, measurement, and the customer experience. To achieve a well-rounded customer view tomorrow, we need to start today The three-pillared approach bridges the gap between the offline and online worlds. This provides a well-rounded view of customers and audiences. However, the ability to tie these aspects of identity together still presents several challenges. To achieve the three-pillared approach today, you need to use many vendors and fragmented data sources. Often with conflicting data. As we look forward, the tools to do this are becoming more advanced and unified. The players in our ecosystem should adopt a seamless identity strategy. One that provides a privacy-safe yet full-picture solution. That means capturing and unifying all devices within a household. While also understanding the consumer behaviors and profiles behind those devices. Keep up with your customers and their data Once we create an informed identity strategy, we can begin to understand the makeup of each household and the individuals within. In this new world, personalizing the experience for an audience is key. Where do they prefer to spend their time? What type of content are they most engaged in? Only then can we as an industry provide an optimal experience for each consumer. All while driving greater ROI for advertisers and publishers. Are you ready to know more about your customers than ever before? Let’s get to work together to achieve your marketing goals. Contact us to learn how we can connect the complex dots of identity resolution. About our experts Damian Amitin, VP of Enterprise Partnerships, Experian Marketing Services Damian Amitin is the VP of Enterprise Partnerships and joined Experian during the Tapad acquisition in November 2020. Damian is a senior sales and partnerships executive, specializing in the identity resolution and marketing data ecosystem. Damian helps brands, publishers, and technology vendors enable enhanced ID resolution through The Experian/Tapad platform to attain a 360 view of the customer across targeting analytics, attribution, and personalization. Colleen Dawe, Senior Account Executive, Experian Marketing Services Colleen Dawe is a Senior Account Executive on the Advanced TV Team within Experian Marketing Services. With 15 years of experience working within the television ecosystem, Colleen works with clients to bring the value and expertise of Experian to support their objectives in the areas of data, identity, activation, and measurement. Get in touch
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Next up in our Ask the Expert series, we hear from Sarah Ilie and Lauren Portell. Sarah and Lauren talk about the internet’s value exchange – what we gain and lose when it’s so easy to share our information. Is convenience hurting or helping us? The age of connectivity Today, it’s almost unimaginable to think about how your day-to-day life would look without the convenience of the internet, smartphones, apps, and fitness trackers; the list goes on and on. We live in the age of connectivity. We have the convenience to buy products delivered to our homes on the same day. We can consume content across thousands of platforms. We also have watches or apps that track our health with more granularity than ever before. The internet’s value exchange In exchange for this convenience and information, we must share various kinds of data for these transactions and activities to take place. Websites and apps give you the option to “opt in” and share your data. They also often let you know that they are collecting your data. This can feel like an uncomfortable proposition and an invasion of privacy to many people. What does it mean to opt-in to a website or app’s tracking cookies? What value do we exchange? What opting in means for you Opting in to cookies means that you are allowing the app or website to track your online activity and collect anonymous data that is aggregated for marketing analytics. The data provides valuable information to understand users better to create better online experiences or offer more useful products and content. Granting access to “tracking” offers several benefits to users such as a customized, more personal user experience or advertising that is more likely to be relevant. For example, let’s imagine you have recently been using an app or website to plan a camping trip. By sharing your data, the website or app has visibility into what is interesting or useful to you which can lead to related content suggestions (best campsites) or relevant advertising and product recommendations (tents and camping equipment). It’s important to know that the marketing data collected when you opt in is extremely valuable. The revenue that advertising generates is often very important to websites and apps because this is how they make money to continue providing content and services to consumers. Data privacy practices Privacy concerns regarding how companies and developers use tracking information have risen over the last couple of years and have resulted in additional protection for consumers’ privacy while still allowing companies to improve their products and advertising. One big step in this direction has been simply making people aware that their data is being collected, why it’s being collected, and providing users with the option to share this data for marketing analytics through opting-in or not. Other important steps to maintain online privacy include formal legal legislation and self-regulation. The right to privacy is protected by more than 600 laws between individual states and federal legislation and the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce recently voted to pass the American Data Privacy and Protection Act. Additionally, marketing organizations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Association of National Advertisers regulate themselves with codes of conduct and standards given there is so much attention on privacy issues. Is the internet’s value exchange worth it? The data that we choose to share by opting in has a lot of benefits for us as consumers. There are laws in place to protect our data and privacy. Of course, it’s important to be aware that data is collected and used for marketing purposes, but it’s also reasonable to share a certain amount of data that translates into benefits for you as well. The best data unlocks the best marketing. Contact us to tap into the power of the world’s largest consumer database. Learn how you can use Experian Marketing Services’ powerful consumer data to learn more about your customers, drive new business, and deliver intelligent interactions across all channels. Meet the Experts: Lauren Portell, Account Executive, Advanced TV, Experian Marketing Services Sarah Ilie, Strategic Partner Manager, Experian Marketing Services Get in touch